


No Sun

by tactfulGnostalgic



Series: The Sun We Know [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Blood, Canon Divergence, Death, F/F, Mild Gore, Retcon Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 19:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9086602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tactfulGnostalgic/pseuds/tactfulGnostalgic
Summary: You close your eyes again, and try to slow the beating of your heart. You're lightheaded. You wish you could see the sun again. You miss it, after so many months spent in the darkness of space. The sun reminds you of you and Calliope, together, as you could have been, as you should have been.(Alternatively: death, and its variations.)





	

v. 

You never meet her.

 

vi.

You never meet her.

 

vii.

You never meet her.

 

viii. 

She finds you in the Dream Bubbles, and she's beautiful. You want to just  _look_ at her, for as long as you can, even if she's wearing the silly troll costume. It makes you furious, seeing her trapped here, her eyes empty and blank. You've waited for years to look her in the eye, and her brother took even that from you. You want to sit with her, and talk about everything and nothing for hours, and fit into the space of one conversation every conversation that you should have had but couldn't. You want to sit and rip back from Paradox Space everything that you two were supposed to have, because you  _know_ you were supposed to have more - you two were meant to have a better life together than this one. 

But instead, she talks about her brother, and what you both need to do to win. Because that's all you ever seem to talk about these days - winning, or how to win, or what needs to be done to win. Win the game, beat the boss, get the prize, restart the human race. There's never any time for the quiet moments, like sitting and watching a bizarre universe unfold over your head. 

Calliope is dead, though. And no amount of wishing or hoping will bring her back. There's no way to carry her with you into the next session. You know this. You  _know_ this. But you haven't accepted it yet. You've never pictured a winning session without her. You can't start now.

So you talk to her, and you smile as much as you can. It doesn't seem to bother her, being dead; if nothing else, she wears it well. When she looks away, you scrub angrily at your eyes. This isn't the time for tears. You'll have time to weep and mourn and scream at an apathetic universe later, once you've offed the bastard that killed her. Now is the time for revenge, and claiming victory. Now is the time for justifying her sacrifice.

She tells you you have to die, and you accept that. She tells you you have to fight, and you accept that, too. You're too busy memorizing her to worry much about what you have to do, or the strategy that she's designing for you all. It would be nice to hug her, you think. She's got a bone-thin frame, and she looks like she needs hugging. How long has she been alone out here? How long has she waited for you, or for anybody? It gnaws at you while she talks, thinking about her curled in on herself in the vast abyss of rainbow-cracks and fluorescent planets. Nobody's out here for her.

"I trust you, too, Roxy," she says, and her voice is low and sweet, and it's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to you. She looks like she means it, too. As if she believes with every ounce of her being that you'll make the right decision. As if she could never imagine you doing anything wrong. She's the only person who's ever believed in you that way. You want to hug her and kiss her and keep her with you, and bring her into the new world and show her every soft and beautiful thing that ever existed.

But you can't. Because she's dead. And you're dreaming.

"I love you," you don't say, because it's not what either of you need to hear. "I never imagined a new world without you in it."

"Thanks," you say, and hope she reads into it.

Then her eyes drift over your shoulder, and she starts shouting, and then your Mom's there - your teenage Mom, dressed like a traffic cone and smiling bemusedly at you - and then she throws something in your eyes and you wake up on a cold, hard floor on a purple planet with nothing but a dimming memory of Callie's face.

You cling to it as you go about your escape. You force yourself to remember the white tufts of her hair, the curl of her horns, the green suit, even if it wasn't her real form. She looked beautiful to you, anyway. You imagine what her eyes looked like and reconcile yourself with the fact that you'll never get to see them. 

Then Jane and Jake arrive with candy that makes the world feel better, for a while, and you lose yourself. Trickster Mode blurs all the pain and hurtful things and convinces you to love what's in front of you, and forget what's not. So for a whole nine hours you don't think of Calliope, or her dark, empty eyes, or the chaotic non-world that holds her. You don't think of the life that you two won't have together, because you can't think of anything that would make you sad. You lose yourself in a way that you haven't since you went sober, and it feels so damn good.

But then you wake up on another cold, hard floor, and the cold, hard truth screws its way into your brain and sits there like a lump of steel. You distract yourself with your friends' problems and your imminent death. But it's still there. It never gives up, really - your stubborn old broken heart.

 

ix. 

"Fucking  _Batterwitch,"_ you swear, holding a hand to your open stomach. "Fuckin - piece of shit seamonkey -"

"Don't talk," Rose orders you. She's always been composed, if a tad embarrassed at times, but she's never panicked. It makes the terror written over her face right now rather unsettling. "Don't waste energy. Your body is shutting down and -"

"This counts as heroic, doesn't it?" You glance at the slain Empress behind you - stabbed through the neck, after she managed to spear you through the gut. "Killing her."

"Yes, it probably does," she snaps. "Which is why it was stupid and you should have waited - look, we'll call Jane, this will be fine, _it will be fine -_ "

"Kanaya," you say. Fuck, it hurts to talk. "Kanaya - you sick deadly bitch, you, c'mere -"

She kneels elegantly at your side. Come to think of it, you can't remember Kanaya doing anything inelegantly. 

"Look, Kanaya," you say desperately. "You gotta - you gotta take care of her, okay? Rose? Me dying - it's probably gonna fuck her up, after losing her mom, y'know, and her with a front-row seat to the show n' all. You gotta make sure she's okay. Don't let her drink, you know? Dump it all out if you gotta, but you gotta make sure she's all right. It's important to me, okay, and I know, I know you've got a lot of shit on your plate, with the alien mother egg and stuff, but -"

"I will." She takes your hand. Her skin is rough and dry, and warm enough to be comforting, although cooler than any human's would be. "You have my word."

"Oh, fuck. Thanks, man, you don't know how good that is to hear." Rose is still fussing over your wound. She cares more than you do if you live, at this point, and it's faintly amusing to you. You're finally being mothered, and it's on your deathbed. Paradox Space is a bitch. "Like, Lalondes, we don't process shit well, y'know? Don't get me wrong, we're badass motherfuckers - see fig a, heh, look at that bitch, she's dead as _fuck_  - but we need a support system real bad. Took me a while to figure that out. Dunno if Rose's got that down yet. Hope she does eventually."

"I am glad to do it." God bless Kanaya, the bastion of reason. She looks saddened by your death, but she's still rational. Probably because she doesn't know you all that well, which turned out to be good luck, because you need someone besides you to stay focused. 

John looks horrified, but you don't have the energy to console him, and hey, it's your fucking death, you shouldn't be responsible for keeping everyone emotionally stable. You try anyway. "Hey, John," you say. "Don't - don't get worked up about this one. Wasn't your fault. I'll come back from the dead myself and kick your ass if you start thinking that shit, because it isn't true."

"That kind of gives me an incentive to think it."

"Spoken like someone who's never had their ass kicked by Roxy Lalonde," you tell him, and then lift your hand for a fist bump. "Put her there, my guy. We killed the Condesce."

"Yeah," he says, quietly, and bumps your fist. "You killed the Condesce."

You want to correct him, but it's getting hard to breathe, and wowee is that a lot of blood. Rose is yelling and you and Kanaya and screaming for someone to call Jane, call Jane, for God's sake call Jane because she's  _dying_ , but it's getting pretty hard to think.

Your consciousness comes and goes for a while, and you accept that Jane, if she comes, will be too late. You start to think about your friends. Dirk. You had a lot to tell him. You needed to apologize, to give him the kind of friendship he deserved. You think you two would have been pretty tight moirails, if you'd had the chance, and you'd pulled your head out of your ass. Oh, well. Can't regret that for long. You want to talk to Jake and Jane, too, because they had to live without you for a long time and nobody should have to live that long without Roxy Lalonde. It occurs to you that they'll have to live without her for a lot longer, now. Maybe forever. That's a sad thought, and you don't waste much more time on it.

Then Calliope drifts through your thoughts, and you squeeze your eyes shut to enjoy the picture of her. You wonder if you'll find another version of her in the Dream Bubbles. Maybe you guys can live out the rest of the session together in peace, before it deteriorates when the others claim the Reward. 

Your eyes shoot open and you grab Kanaya's collar, wrenching her down to your level, aware that you're being all hells of rude but incapable of giving a single fuck. "Kanaya," you order. "Or Rose, or John, even fucking - you gotta -  _Callie._  Take care of her. She doesn't have a lotta friends, but she's pretty and kind and nice and wonderful and - you gotta take  _care_ of her. Fuck, you've got to." You're begging. You don't care.

When Rose and Kanaya nod, and John gives a little jerky head movement you take for assent, it relaxes you. You close your eyes again, and try to slow the beating of your heart. You're lightheaded. You wish you could see the sun again. You miss it, after so many months spent in the darkness of space. The sun reminds you of you and Calliope, together, as you could have been, as you should have been.

You think of Calliope and the color green. Lovely, lovely green. Green like the sun. You hope that she'll be happy in whatever bright new world they build.


End file.
